At a public memorial that drew more than 1,200 people to the Center for the Arts on Tuesday, colleagues, friends and family paid respects to UB’s 13th president, William R. Greiner, as a man who “dreamed big” and encouraged those around him to do the same.

Speakers at the two-hour event ranged from Greiner’s children to a former student and two UB presidents—Greiner’s successor, John B. Simpson, and his predecessor, Steven B. Sample, who left UB to become president of the University of Southern California.

Thomas Headrick, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, remembered Greiner, a friend for more than 50 years, as vastly knowledgeable, curious, serious, funny, forthright and empathetic, a man blessed with prodigious energy and common sense. He loved the Bulls, the Red Sox and sports in general. In golf, he had a long, flowing swing. In life, he had a big heart and sense of humor.

In all, more than a dozen people stepped to the podium on a stage adorned with sprays of blue and white flowers to honor the man whose leadership transformed the institution he had served for 42 years as president, provost and law school faculty member.

Among those who took the microphone was Jeremy M. Jacobs, chair of the UB Council, who announced that the university would name its newest student housing project after Greiner. William R. Greiner Hall, formerly known as South Ellicott Suites, will blend residential, academic and recreational areas—a fitting tribute for a man who worked tirelessly to enrich the community life of the university. At a reception following Tuesday’s formal program, guests lined up to sign a structural beam for the new building on the North Campus adjacent to the Ellicott Complex, which is expected to be ready for occupancy in fall 2011.

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UB Law School’s Affordable Housing Clinic has helped to secure three grants totaling more than $28 million that will enable the construction of 106 new housing units in the City of Buffalo.

The new housing on the city’s west, east and south sides, will be energy-efficient apartments with affordable rents for senior citizens and low-income persons. Funding for the construction projects will come through the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

“This is a real tribute to the work the clinic has done, along with its students,” says George Hezel, clinical professor of law and director of the Affordable Housing Clinic. “They have poured their hearts and souls into this project. It’s a good result for the community at large and proof that UB is an economic development engine for the city and the region. If Buffalo is going to remain competitive in its search for federal and state funds, it needs an experienced and sophisticated advocate. With the clinic, we have an edge that other cities don’t have.”

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UB researchers are the first to show that a controlled individualized exercise training program can bring athletes and others suffering with post-concussion syndrome (PCS) back to the playing field or to their daily activities.

In a paper published in the January issue of the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, the researchers report that a program of progressive exercise developed individually for each participant and performed at levels just below the onset of symptoms is safe and can relieve nearly all PCS symptoms.

Their results counter the accepted wisdom that PCS should be treated with rest, reassurance and antidepressants, and that physical activity should be avoided.

“Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this study is that all of the subjects that participated, both athletes and non-athletes, got better eventually, although the athletes certainly improved the fastest,” says Barry Willer, professor of psychiatry and rehabilitation sciences and senior author on the study.

“It also was reassuring to discover that the use of exercise was safe and did not prolong symptoms, a worry expressed by other practitioners.”

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The powerful aftershock that hit the already devastated city of Port au Prince on Jan. 20 has only intensified Haiti’s need for French-speaking structural engineers who can immediately determine which of the structures left standing may still pose a threat to human safety.

One of the first such missions has now begun, led by Andre Filiatrault, UB professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering and director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), headquartered at UB. Filiatrault is working in partnership with Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), a national organization that helps provide developing countries with affordable renewable energy, sanitation and clean water.

Filiatrault left the U.S. yesterday (Jan. 21) with a team of 10 architects and engineers from U.S. educational institutions and private engineering firms. Their mission is to determine which of Haiti’s most critical structures—particularly its hospitals and ports—are safe to enter, and which pose a danger.

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UB has joined Stanford, Duke and other members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) in developing a Web site that delivers research news directly to the public. Futurity, which was launched in September, is designed to showcase the latest research discoveries in science, engineering, the environment, health and more.

According to Joe Brennan, associate vice president for university communications, Futurity was an idea developed by the AAU Public Affairs Network last year to create an online strategy for getting university research news in front of wider audiences in an era of shrinking traditional news media. UB’s Office of University Communications, which was involved at the development stage, is funding UB’s participation in this effort and supplying the stories, with the cooperation of UB’s research faculty.

UB’s research is being showcased alongside that of nearly 50 AAU schools, all among the top research institutions in the country. The front page of Futurity changes daily, with stories subsequently archived. Partnering universities contribute stories weekly.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. — Donald Shoup, PhD, a widely published and influential professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been named the 2010 Clarkson Visiting Chair in Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.

Shoup’s extensive research into parking as a key link between transportation and land use has had important consequences for cities, the economy and the environment.

He will be scholar-in-residence in the UB School of Architecture and Planning Jan. 25-29, during which time he will teach and present a series of public lectures and seminars on and off campus for both academicians and local planning practitioners.

Among them is the free, public 2010 Clarkson Lecture, which will be held Jan. 27 at 5:30 p.m. in 301 Crosby Hall, South Campus.

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David Felder

BUFFALO, N.Y. — June in Buffalo, the internationally celebrated festival and conference for emerging composers of new music, will celebrate its 35th anniversary this year and it has a treat in store for its audiences.

From May 31 to June 6, the festival once again will offer a brilliant program of afternoon and evening concerts, master classes, open rehearsals, lectures, seminars and installations featuring several of the finest composers and performers of new music in the world: Steve Reich, Augusta Read Thomas, Olivier Pasquet, Bernard Rands, David Felder, Roger Reynolds, the Arditti Quartet, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble SurPlus, Ensemble Labortorium — the list goes on.

The festival was founded in 1975 at the University at Buffalo by Morton Feldman, a pioneer of “indeterminate music,” a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers, who included John Cage, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown — all of whom were involved with June in Buffalo from its inception.

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The UB Institute of Jewish Thought and Heritage will present the first David Blitzer Lecture Series in Jewish Studies Feb. 4 through April 22.

The series will feature seven free public talks on and off campus by four exceptional scholars in the field of Jewish philosophy: Aaron Hughes, Kenneth Seeskin, Lenn E. Goodman and Richard Sugarman.

The series was endowed by author and CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer, a 1970 graduate of UB and 1999 recipient of a SUNY honorary doctorate in humane letters, in honor of his late father David, a Jewish Polish refugee.

With the exception of the inaugural lecture on Feb. 4, all speakers in the series will present two free public talks: an afternoon lecture at UB and an evening talk on a related topic in the Jewish Community Center, 2640 North Forest Road, Getzville.

The series will open with “Why We Should All Be Medieval Jewish Philosophers,” a lecture by Aaron W. Hughes, as associate director of the UB institute and Gordon and Gretchen Gross Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of History.

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Leaving family and friends to travel halfway around the world to a strange culture and environment can become an isolating experience for the many international students who enter UB each year. To help stem that feeling and provide more of a welcome mat, the International Student Mentoring Program was implemented during the fall semester. The initial responses are a welcome sign.

“The mentoring program gave me lots of valuable things during my first semester,” says mentee Jun Bying Park, a South Korean native who found through his research that UB is the optimal school to pursue the study of law. “When I came to UB a few months ago, many things, such as culture of America, university life, are not familiar to me. However, my mentor and professors helped me to live at UB very comfortably. My mentor helped me to reduce the culture gap between USA and my country through introducing lots of valuable American culture and society.”

Park’s comments were among the many evaluations that gave high marks to the new program, a joint effort of the Office of International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) and Counseling Services.

“We’d been concerned for some time about some international students who become extremely isolated,” explains Ellen Dussourd, ISSS director. “Counseling Services has observed international students in counseling who lack social support, and as a result become depressed. Students who leave behind their families and friends have to come here and form new support systems, and not everyone is outgoing enough to do that. We’re hoping through this program to provide social programs where students would meet other people.”

The program was adapted to UB based on a model that Xuhua Qin, Counseling Services psychologist and mentoring program advisor, helped develop as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After she came to UB a year and a half ago, she proposed the idea to ISSS. “I see this program as a bridge for international students to develop new social connections, helping them to become more familiar with the academic culture,” says Qin.

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Seven UB undergraduates interested in learning more about student leadership in other cultures return to Western New York tomorrow after studying in the Far East as part of UB’s SLIDE (Student Leadership International Dialogue and Exchange) Program.

An initiative of the Division of Student Affairs, the aim of the program is to give students an opportunity to interact firsthand with counterparts in Singapore and learn about models of student leadership in other cultures. Student Affairs expects to offer such opportunities on a regular basis, with another program planned for July in Beijing.

UB worked with two international partners—the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU)—to organize program activities.

SIM, which hosted the program, partners on four UB undergraduate programs and one UB graduate program conducted entirely at the SIM campus. These programs currently enroll more than 1,000 students from Singapore and the surrounding region. Some of these students spend a semester or more at UB. For the past four summers, SIM also has hosted a six-week study abroad program on Asian business for UB undergraduates.

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